This is a good question! At some point I suppose you'd agree that some number is too much, no matter how large a stakeholder we were talking about. In your view should it just be made simpler and NSI could have one rep with three votes as against everyone else's one vote?
I think there are many ways to slice and dice this. NSI
has made it clear that the only thing it wants is the requirements
of the white paper: uncaptured, diverse, fair and open process.
Instead it's captured and being run by the gTLD-Mou crowd,
there's little diversity, it's unfair and closed. Just look
at what's happening in the Group C. It's two gTLD-MoUers -
one of them acting as an Fascist chair twice over - against Ambler.
If you see ICANN as a sort of trade association--a chance for otherwise-competing industry stakeholders to get under one roof and get standards settled, for example--then I'd expect NSI would be a large player. If instead you see ICANN as having a public trust function for the good of the Internet at large, the notion is a little different. Imagine if the FCC commissioners were picked as "one by AT&T, one by NBC, one by Rupert Murdoch," etc. It's not right, even though each of those entities are large stakeholders with a lot to gain or lose by what the FCC decides. The whole constituency approach, where constituencies funnel into a names council in equal measure, seems quite odd to me, especially since the constituencies overlap so much. It's particularly bad when there's no vehicle for individual participation, either through a recognized IDNO or through the non-commercial constituency.
Uhhh...we're supposed to be dealing here with one of
the Internet's niche business - Internet identifiers -
not a Commission with the power to regulate all
telecommunications and radio. Yes, I believe the
model is that of a trade association. Even in a
regulated industry with public telecon networks,
NANBA is a trade association.
This whole thing has gone way out of control. It's
time for Congressional and Judicial Branch intervention.
Sticking with "gTLD registries" as the constituency, though, do you think its membership should include representatives from .mil, .gov, .arpa, and .int?
The MIL and GOV guys said they could be bothered. They're
going to do what they want. As far as they're concerned
ICANN doesn't exist. ARPA is effectively run by the
IP Address registries and will likely remain there. INT
is in limbo. You have Shaw trying to give the ITU an operational
activity it isn't supposed to have, and for which it's a conflict
of interest because most of INT is TPC - which it Marshall T Rose
and Carl Malamud's fax bypass of the ITU's constituents' fax
networks.
The gTLD-MoU folk are a coalition of sorts rather than a single corporation. But I do believe the council would be best served by having a variety of people and interests represented there. If it's not capture it can sure appear that way, which is almost as bad. ...JZ
They are signatories to an international agreement still under
ITU auspices that asserts a common view and creates several implementing
bodies. They collectively represent a strong common party of interest -
and they have clearly captured almost the entire ICANN apparatus.
In fact, most of them assert that ICANN is simply a gTLD-MoU retread
done for "political purposes." The notion of diversity is anathema
to their approach. It's a religion, not a process.
--tony
